Call for Papers: Popular Entertainments Research Working Group – IFTR World Congress 2026 What Theatre Does
| Type of post: | Association news item |
| Sub-type: | No sub-type |
| Posted By: | Gillian Arrighi |
| Status: | Current |
| Date Posted: | Tue, 21 Oct 2025 |
Call for Papers
Popular Entertainments Research Working Group – IFTR World Congress 2026
What Theatre Does
6–10 July 2026, University of Melbourne
IFTR’s Popular Entertainments Working Group is interested in uncovering and giving voice to historical and contemporary forms of popular performance that have largely been overlooked in dominant theatre history narratives. The multiple performance styles/genres within the group’s field of interest include circus, burlesque, variety, vaudeville, revue, sport as performance, music in popular entertainments, popular theatre, clowns, and comedy. More recently the scope and focus of the group’s work has expanded to consider popular entertainment’s important role in the wider theatre ecology; the influences of the popular on historical avant-garde and contemporary experimental practices have encompassed picture postcards, medicine shows, tamasha, ijele, masquerades, comedy clubs, puppet theatre, digital gaming, and drag, to name a few; to be inclusive of the changing cultural status of popular forms. You can find out more about the group’s work at https://iftr.org/working-groups/popular-entertainments
For the IFTR conference in 2026, which will take place in Melbourne, Australia from 6-10 July, the Popular Entertainments Working Group wishes to echo the conference’s focus on performance, technique, and efficacy. We seek to engage with the concerns particular to the domain of popular forms and the academic discourse around it. One of the concepts we’re particularly interested in this year is the idea of joy. Joy (laughter/resistance/mischief) informs the efficacy and physical vocabularies of popular entertainments. How can we bring it back into the conversations around popular entertainments and their efficacy? Here are some prompts to help you think through these concerns:
Group Meetings
The Popular Entertainments Working Group operates by circulating members’ draft papers in advance of the conference, enabling a more focused discussion. Once papers are circulated, members are then asked to nominate another paper they’d like to moderate. The group allocates approximately twenty minutes for discussion of each paper. Members are asked to speak about their research for ten minutes; visual or AV material that amplifies or supports their paper in some way is encouraged. (As all papers are read in advance, presenters are not required to provide an oral summary of their paper.) A moderator assigned to the paper will then lead the remaining ten minutes of discussion.
Submission of Abstracts
Please specify Popular Entertainments Working Group when submitting your abstract (250-300 words). Accepted participants will be asked to submit full papers (no more than 5000 words) to the convenors in early June for distribution. Papers need not be in a finished state: drafts and works-in-progress are acceptable. Once gathered, all papers will be made available to group members for reading and a discussant will be allocated to each.
Note the submission timeline
1 November: Abstract submissions open. Abstracts must be submitted to the IFTR conference platform via the IFTR webpage.
8 December: Abstract submissions close.
30 December: Notification of Acceptance
Please note that you have to be a member of the IFTR to submit an abstract. To join or renew your membership, visit the IFTR webpage from 1 October.
For inquiries about the working group, please contact Aastha Gandhi and Susan Kattwinkel at: iftrpopentertainment@gmail.com
Popular Entertainments Research Working Group – IFTR World Congress 2026
What Theatre Does
6–10 July 2026, University of Melbourne
IFTR’s Popular Entertainments Working Group is interested in uncovering and giving voice to historical and contemporary forms of popular performance that have largely been overlooked in dominant theatre history narratives. The multiple performance styles/genres within the group’s field of interest include circus, burlesque, variety, vaudeville, revue, sport as performance, music in popular entertainments, popular theatre, clowns, and comedy. More recently the scope and focus of the group’s work has expanded to consider popular entertainment’s important role in the wider theatre ecology; the influences of the popular on historical avant-garde and contemporary experimental practices have encompassed picture postcards, medicine shows, tamasha, ijele, masquerades, comedy clubs, puppet theatre, digital gaming, and drag, to name a few; to be inclusive of the changing cultural status of popular forms. You can find out more about the group’s work at https://iftr.org/working-groups/popular-entertainments
For the IFTR conference in 2026, which will take place in Melbourne, Australia from 6-10 July, the Popular Entertainments Working Group wishes to echo the conference’s focus on performance, technique, and efficacy. We seek to engage with the concerns particular to the domain of popular forms and the academic discourse around it. One of the concepts we’re particularly interested in this year is the idea of joy. Joy (laughter/resistance/mischief) informs the efficacy and physical vocabularies of popular entertainments. How can we bring it back into the conversations around popular entertainments and their efficacy? Here are some prompts to help you think through these concerns:
- What do popular entertainments achieve and what methods do they use? What constitutes the corporeality of performance in the ‘popular’? What is it doing differently from other forms that may use similar techniques?
- What is the intention of popular performances and what do these achieve for their spectators? How does a form’s technique include its spectators? How do spectators contribute to a form differently in a popular form than in more conventional theatre? How has this efficacy and approach towards it shifted over time?
- Does the efficacy of a form change if it moves from “folk” or “popular” to “mass” or “digital” entertainment? How does efficacy differ for broader categories through which we study performance? Does it vary with forms which have both historical and contemporary existence? Is a form’s intended efficacy part of its definition as part of the popular?
- What does the study of popular entertainments ‘do’ within the field of theatre and performance studies? In other words, what effect does its study have on how we think about the larger field? What disruptions/interruptions are caused by our presence in academia and scholarly research?
- What are the new terminologies that assist you in pushing the concepts, understandings, and workings of the popular, especially with the shift towards posthumanities, digital humanities, and non-binary and multidirectional ways of looking at the world? Do you look for these terminologies beyond the field of performance studies?
Group Meetings
The Popular Entertainments Working Group operates by circulating members’ draft papers in advance of the conference, enabling a more focused discussion. Once papers are circulated, members are then asked to nominate another paper they’d like to moderate. The group allocates approximately twenty minutes for discussion of each paper. Members are asked to speak about their research for ten minutes; visual or AV material that amplifies or supports their paper in some way is encouraged. (As all papers are read in advance, presenters are not required to provide an oral summary of their paper.) A moderator assigned to the paper will then lead the remaining ten minutes of discussion.
Submission of Abstracts
Please specify Popular Entertainments Working Group when submitting your abstract (250-300 words). Accepted participants will be asked to submit full papers (no more than 5000 words) to the convenors in early June for distribution. Papers need not be in a finished state: drafts and works-in-progress are acceptable. Once gathered, all papers will be made available to group members for reading and a discussant will be allocated to each.
Note the submission timeline
1 November: Abstract submissions open. Abstracts must be submitted to the IFTR conference platform via the IFTR webpage.
8 December: Abstract submissions close.
30 December: Notification of Acceptance
Please note that you have to be a member of the IFTR to submit an abstract. To join or renew your membership, visit the IFTR webpage from 1 October.
For inquiries about the working group, please contact Aastha Gandhi and Susan Kattwinkel at: iftrpopentertainment@gmail.com
