Documenting Performance

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, live art, curatorial, installational, participatory and visual projects, as well as particular modes of critical engagement. 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 welcomes new and experienced scholars with interests in this area.

Current Convenors

Dr Rebecca Collins

Lecturer in Contemporary Art Theory, University of Edinburgh

Dr Vanessa Damilola Macaulay

Asistant Professor in Performance, School of Art Institute, Chicago

Dr Emma Bennett

Assistant Professor in Performance, University College Dublin

Calls for Participation

27-29 August 2025, University of Warwick Theme: Documents Against Form ‘What does seeing the past do to ameliorate or repair loss?’ (Jennifer C. Nash, How We Write Now: Living with Black Feminist Theory, 2024: 78). The document has long...
Deadline: March 10, 2025

Interim Events

Event date and venue: 18 May 2022, 10am–4pm at MayDay Rooms, London *Please note the date of this event has changed in support of the strike action happening on the original date.* This gathering of the Documenting Performance Working...
Event Date: May 18, 2022
Venue: Tate Exchange at Tate Modern, London 12-6pm Call for Participation If you hear tell of an event, somebody relates it to you. Hear tell involves both a speaker and a listener, a performer and an audience. It represents an account...
Event Date: May 13, 2019
Tate Exchange at Tate Modern 5th Floor, Blavatnik Building 12-6pm https://www.eventbrite.com/e/hear-tell-describing-reporting-narrating-tickets-60466329419 If you hear tell of an event, somebody relates it to you. Hear tell involves both...
Event Date: May 13, 2019
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