TaPRA 2025 Directing and Dramaturgy CFP
Deadline: Monday 10 March 2025
27-29 August 2025, University of Warwick
Theme: On Joy and Ecstasy
What is the role of joy in theatre and performance? How does the idea of “a good night out” (Aston & Harris, 2012) shape our theatrical landscape? And, how do joy and ecstasy figure beyond the idea of theatre as entertainment? What are the dramaturgical limitations and possibilities of staging joy and/or ecstasy? What is the politics associated with such stagings?
Joy
In the past decade, contemporary liberation movements have sought to harness the political potential of joy. Kleaver Cruz, founder of the Black Joy Project, says that Black Joy “does not dismiss the realities of our collective pain … It’s about using that joy as an entry into understanding the oppressive forces we navigate through as a means to imagine and create a world free of them” (Nichols n.d.). For example, Tawala Theatre’s 2024 Black Joy Season sought to “ensure that Black talent and creativity are at the heart of building cohesion in our country” (Talawa.com).
Joy, in such terms, cannot exist without the oppositional oppression it rebels against, it is not simply an emotion but rather an “increase in one’s power to affect and be affected. It is the capacity to do and feel more” (Montgomery 2017, p 29-30). The radical nature of this joy has been identified and mobilised for its political and transformative potential. Petra Kupper’s 2022 work on experiments in disabled performance “in pain and joy” foster connection and the co-creation of disability cultures through somatic dance practice. In December of 2024, Sexualities produced a special issue ‘Mobilising queer joy: Establishing queer joy studies’ as a call to protest oppression in the form of rising colonial, settler, anti-queer, ableist, anti-trans, carceral and ecologically damaging rhetoric and legislation. This academic provocation reflects trends already in existence within theatre and performance. Performative events and interventions such as Drag Storytime, inclusive and accessible festivals such as Hijinx’s Unity Festival (Wales) and No Limits Festival (Netherlands) and theatre collective Y no había luz’s performances of care amidst disaster response (Puerto Rico), all evoke joy as means for collective resistance and/or social transformation.
At the same time, positivity and optimism have been regarded with suspicion from an Affect Studies perspective because they paper over the cracks of a neoliberal system structured around the impossible promise of happiness and fulfilment built on the back of personal responsibility (Ahmed 2010). Lauren Berlant’s Cruel Optimism, featured in last year’s Working Group discussions on precarity/precariousness, details a concept that has become crucial to considerations of how hope and happiness are coopted into the neoliberal structures shaping ordinary life. Objects become cruelly optimistic “when the object that draws your attachment actively impedes the aim that brought you to it initially” (Berlant, 2011 p.1); an observation which speaks clearly to the contrasting aims brought to cultural production within and beyond the theatre industry.
In a more positive light, the liveness of theatre, the theatrical event can be a conduit for joy as celebration of togetherness, enabled not only by the staged performance but also by the context and spaces where the theatrical event takes place. In her 2024 talk at Queen’s University (Belfast), Performance as Possibility: Finding Joy and Hope at the Theatre, Jill Dolan asked important questions about theatre as celebration and togetherness: “What can theatre model about the joy and hopefulness of being together with strangers, witnessing the narrative, aesthetic, and emotional possibilities of performance? How can theatre help us practice social encounters based on joy and hope?” (QUB.ac.uk).
Taking inspiration from this, joy perhaps becomes synonymous with a sense of community, space for support and exchange, and of different cultures and peoples coming together. Audre Lorde suggests that “the sharing of joy, whether physical, emotional, psychic, or intellectual, forms a bridge between the sharers which can be the basis for understanding much of what is not shared between them, and lessens the threat of their difference” (1978, p. 7). In this sense, theatre in the community, amateur theatre, forum theatre and beyond, can exemplify joy as celebration of togetherness.
Ecstasy
To be ecstatic means, literally to be “outside of oneself” (Butler, 2004 p. 20), coming from the Greek ex (outside) and stasis (to stand). The ecstatic finds political articulation in concepts such as mystical anarchism (Critchley, 2009), as well as the rousing sense of collectivity experienced in protest movements and political rallies. It can refer to out-of-body experiences of jouissance, an apolitical sense of being beside oneself with joy and immersion in collective experiences, such as those which performance spectatorships offer. Such experiences are seen across theatre and performance history, from Euripides’ The Baccahe to the mysticism of Antonin Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty, from Drag Shows to musical theatre fandom. Theatre, as a form of quasi-religious ritual, has the potential to find/explore/access the ecstatic, to push boundaries, raise questions about our world, our societal structures and our relationships. And yet, theatre’s fundamental representational functionality raises questions of stageability; what is stageable and what is not? Is it possible for theatre to represent the out-of-body, the beyond-real, the beyond-life associated with ecstasy?
So, how, if at all, is it possible to stage ecstasy or evoke ecstatic response, in such a way to activate its radical political potential? What directorial and dramaturgical strategies make and hold space for ecstasy and/or transformative joy?
We invite participants to engage with these ideas and questions, reflecting on different historical, contemporary and future dramaturgies. Proposals might cover but need not be limited to the following topics:
- Joy in commercial theatre/economics of joy
- Dramaturgies of ecstatic crowds (e.g. rallies, sports matches, rave and dance culture)
- Dramaturgies of queer and/or subversive joy
- Dramaturgies of cabaret and music hall
- Dramaturgies of camp
- Black Joy in theatre and performance
- “Crip Joy” in performance (Conroy, 2022)
- Mysticism and performance
- Toxic positivity
- Staging jouissance and excess
- Collective and collectivist dramaturgies
- Ecstasy, ethics and performance
- Joy, its stability and instability, and the possibilities/provocations of this
- Ecstasy and its stageability/unstageability
- Joy and ecstasy in different cultures and theatrical traditions
- 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
Submit your abstract here by 10 March 2025
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:
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.
