TaPRA 2025 Performance, Identity, and Community CFP
Deadline: Monday 10 March 2025
27-29 August 2025, University of Warwick
Theme: Looking Back to Look Forward: Where Have We Gone Wrong?
In light of the conference theme, ‘Milestones and Markers’, we’ve chosen to reflect on the themes of the Performance, Identity, and Community Working Group over the past few years, taking stock of what we’ve done, what we’ve not done, and what we want to do in the future. Methodological questions have cut through the CfPs over the last five years, with themes ranging from cruel optimism (Lauren Berlant) in 2019, redress and reparation in 2021, addressing the discipline in 2022, and the afterlives of performance in 2023. Our 2023 interim event, Addressing Archives, also offered a closer examination of the politics and ethics of archival research, asking how we might unlearn some of the colonial, extractive research practices that we have acquired over time (Ariella Azoulay), and how queer approaches might reveal some of the limitations of hegemonic archival methods. We have cast a backwards look in different ways over the last half decade, and we want to retain that criticality in this year’s Call for Papers by cycling back around, and building specifically on the idea of inheritances and reproduction.
Within this call, we invite participants to reflect on what we have inherited as a discipline—in terms of histories, knowledges, practices, methods, and ideas—and ask how these have shaped our research and teaching. In what ways have these inheritances been negative—forestalling critical engagement, or even enacting and reproducing harm—and in what ways have they been positive and productive? The spirit of this call is to draw attention to where we might have gone wrong, and to think critically on how we might begin to repair our actions.
Possible themes and explorations include (but are not limited to):
- Casting a critical look on our previous discussions of afterlives / archives
- Addressing extractive research practices and ethics
- Unlearning imperialism (Ariella Azoulay) and exploring counter histories
- Critical fabulations (Saidiya Hartman)
- Wake work (Christina Sharpe)
- Is optimism always cruel? (Lauren Berlant)
- Feeling backward (Heather Love)
- Hope, futurity, and temporalities (José Esteban Muñoz)
- Queer messy methodologies / queer failure and scavenger methodologies (Jack Halberstam) / glitch as method (Legacy Russell)
- Complaints and being a ‘killjoy’ (Sara Ahmed)
- Crip methodologies (Robert McRuer) / crip spacetime (Margaret Price) / crip genealogies (Mel Y. Chen et al.)
You might also want to think about the following questions:
- How are the material conditions in which we work affecting our research, particularly in relation to precarity in the sector? In such a context, how might we find ways to sustain our research practice?
- What is the material foundation for the idea of performance identity and community, which might sit outside or alongside conventional ideas of theatre audiences and contexts—e.g., what new or neglected performance geographies are we addressing; what kinds of communities has the discipline left out; and what new publics is performance engaging?
- How does our pedagogical practice influence our research, if at all? In the words of bell hooks, if we ‘teach to transgress’, how might we research to transgress, too?
Please note: we encourage contemporary and historic reflections on performance, identity, and community, and we aim to collaborate again this year—for the third year running—with Theatre and Performance Histories Working Group on a joint panel. As such, please indicate if you would like to be considered for the joint panel.
If productive, we also want to invite working group members to reflect on their past contributions to this group, no matter how long ago these were, and draw connections between their past, present, and future research. We also invite first-time conference goers and new working group members to reflect on their wider practice and research.
Preferences for types of proposal:
We welcome work that addresses original research and also pedagogic research/scholarship. We aim to embed intergenerational working in planning panels and organising the working group.
We welcome papers in all forms, including short performances, conversations between speakers, and/or pre-recorded presentations. We also want to encourage collaborations between academics and artists, and seek to place value on knowledges that extend beyond the academy (noting that there are always asymmetries in accessing support for conferencing).
Embedding learning from the prior conferences, we will continue to work with the idea of friendship as methodology, rooted in dialogue. Our programming will thus seek to offer moments of this generative cross-pollination and allow time for conversations, rather than a traditional Q&A.
Please note: we are limiting papers to 15-18 minutes rather than 20 minutes; we are often oversubscribed and want to make space for as many contributions as possible.
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:
- 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.
