• Haunted repertoires and ghostly bodies
• Early and colonial histories of ballet in Australasia
• Vanished dances and vanished dancers
• Ballet dancers in literature, film and popular culture
• The haunting of contemporary and modern dance by ballet
• The recurrence of the Romantic in contemporary Australian ballet
• Digital dancers and their phantom affects
• Monsters of repetition: swans, wilis and sugar plums
• Indigeneity as a haunting of Australian ballet: from Terra Australis (1946) to Rites (1997)
• Ballet and the haunted ground of Australia’s nation-building project
• Noh theatre and Asian ghosts in ballet
• Gendered hauntings in training, choreography and performance
• Shadows of the past: sets and other design elements in contemporary Australian ballet productions
• How ballet in Australia remembers its past
• The rehearsal room as haunted space
• Ballets blancs: culture, art and policies of white exclusions
• Mesmeric influences: Robert Helpmann, Laurel Martyn, Marilyn Rowe, Rex Reid, Maina Gielgud.
• Fleeting presences: touring companies from Anna Pavlova (1926) to the Tokyo Ballet (2023)
• Ghosts in the machine: digital dancers and technologies of ballet transmission

• Currently enrolled postgraduate student
• Current ADSA student member
• Not in a tenured or continuing academic position
• Not a previous recipient of the Veronica Kelly Prize

• The essay presents a clear, complete, and well-researched argument about an element of drama, theatre or performance studies
• The content is of interest to the field of drama, theatre, dance and performance studies at large
• demonstrates original or innovative content and/or conceptualisation; and
• is suitable for publication in ADS within 3 months of presentation

• $500 from ADSA
• Mentoring toward publication in the 2026 open volume of Australasian Drama Studies
• Winner announced by 30 June 2025

Kia ora e hoa

Join us on Thursday (3 April), for a focused session designed to help you craft a compelling abstract ahead of the extended submission deadline for ADSA’s 2025 Conference in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Wellington, this December.

Session Details:

What: How to Write an Abstract
When: Thursday, 3 April 2025

• 4:00–5:00 PM NZT

Where: Online via Zoom (https://vuw.zoom.us/j/95914173731).

This session will provide essential guidance on best practices for writing an abstract – a vital skill for conferences and academic publications. We are delighted to be joined by two of the conference convenors, Dr Nicola Hyland and Dr Sarah Thomasson, who will share insights into what they look for in an abstract and answer any questions you may have about the conference theme.

The deadline for submitting a 250-word abstract has been extended to 11 April 2025. This conference is an amazing opportunity for you to be involved in, as it will be right on our doorstep for the first time in 11 years!  The ADSA Conference is an exciting and collaborative space to share your work, engage in meaningful academic discussions, and build professional connections both within Aotearoa and across the Tasman. There will also be a dedicated Postgraduate and Early Career Researcher Day as part of the programme.

Even if you just want to refresh, or gain some new skills, come along!

My best

David Simes, PhD Candidate and ADSA PG/ECR Representative

(He/Him)

Te Herenga Waka–Vic​toria University of Wellington

Call for Papers: ADSA Conference (Deadline Extended until 11 April)

Manaakitanga: Performing Welcome, Care and Respect

Te Whanganui-a-Tara – Wellington, Aotearoa
1 – 5 December 2025

Nāku te rourou nāu te rourou ka ora ai te iwi 

With your basket and my basket, we will sustain everyone 

Manaakitanga is a concept from te ao Māori (the Māori world) which is often translated as “hospitality, kindness, generosity, support – the process of showing respect, generosity and care for others” (Te Aka). Manaakitanga is embedded within the ways we practice and form relationships in theatre and how we, as performers, producers, designers, and storytellers, host an audience as if we were bringing them into our own homes. Manaakitanga “combines the notion of process (-tanga) with manaaki, or sharing of mana” (Mullen and Te Rongopai Tukiwaho 4) where mana refers to “prestige, authority, control, power, influence, status, spiritual power, charisma” (Te Aka). As Mark Harvey explains, Manaakitanga “involves the uplifting of mana or reaffirming the mana of others through actions of generosity that include kindness” (142). Recent discourses around care, accessibility, mobility, and respect have brought attention to the role of the host and questions around their responsibilities to spectators and participants. We invite you to consider the intersections between performance, hospitality, care, and respectful exchange as we negotiate our own roles as ‘hosts’ and 'guests’ in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Wellington, in December 2025.  

Manaakitanga is a critical practice of care, drawing attention to and awareness of our social and cultural responsibilities to all communities invited to work within our spaces. This relates to notions of accessibility, mobility and consent, and negotiating the health and safety policies and protocols of diverse institutions. Manaaki relates to reciprocity and shared responsibilities in blurred contexts, such as the role of an audience in immersive and participatory performance practices. We also consider the role of a physical space as ‘host’ and in the ways we might be received within and transformed by scenography: how we experience the terrain in all its “overlaps, echoes and distinctions” (Murray and Keefe 126).  

Performances can enact manaakitanga through creative process, dramaturgical structure and within the frames of storytelling. An account of the interactions between Māori soldiers and their Italian hosts in World War II, Strange Resting Places (2012) by Rob Mokaraka and Paolo Rotondo is described by David O’Donnell as “an outstanding example of manaakitanga in action (Hyland and O’Donnell). The performance literally starts with an act of hosting, with the cast welcoming the audience into the space, sharing espresso coffee and pastries, followed by a waiata performed by the cast. At the end of the play, a cleansing ceremony is incorporated into the dramaturgy as a ritual act to release the audience from the troubling spaces of war and history, while food and wine are offered to the audience to close. Strange Resting Places is bookended not only with manaakitanga by the host/performers but also follows the pattern of poroporoaki in securing the safety (physical/spiritual) of the manuhiri, or visitors, as they encounter representations of historical trauma. 

Indigenous hospitality is at the core of many First Nations performance practices but also precedes many contemporary gatherings: as Land Acknowledgements and in performances of ritual and ceremony. However, this can sometimes seem “performative” rather than shared or reciprocated. Rauna Kuokkanen (Suomi) asserts First Nations hosts are often “eager to welcome the other because they [want] to learn from the stranger, to be open to the other and to be taught. This kind of hospitality is infinite or radical hospitality that exceeds invitation and thus consists of receiving, welcoming without invitation” (Kuokkanen 72). We invoke this theme as a provocation: questioning the ways we are all interacting with our First Nations partners in the context of our shared, often contested histories. We also seek to interrogate who is being excluded from our performance spaces – and why - as well as consideration of invisible or ‘unwelcome’ audiences. 

We offer the following provocations as starting points for responding to this conference theme: 

• Performing kindness, care, and respect 

• Performance and mobility, migration, refugees, asylum seekers, border closures 

• Hosting events, host responsibilities and spectator relationships 

• Performing welcome: rituals and ceremonies from daily rites to Olympic Opening Ceremonies 

• Kai/food in performance or the performativity of food/cooking – dinner theatre, cooking in theatre 

• Generosity in research, debates around open access and dissemination of performance research 

• Domestic spaces in performance, whanau/family, and intergenerational praxes 

• Travel and touring – forming global connections and maintaining regional relationships through performance exchange 

• Facilitating and celebrating LGBTQIA+ spaces and events 

• Respect and care in representations of gender and sexuality in performance 

• Creating accessible, inclusive, and culturally safe venues and performance spaces 

• Interrogating terminology such as “holding space” and “self care” and the weaponisation of these ideas in performance 

We invite abstracts of 250 words responding to these questions, or other scholarly or creative provocations raised by our conference theme, to be submitted via this form by Friday 11 April 2025. We invite proposals for 20-minute paper presentations, artistic research presentations and performances, workshops and roundtable discussions, as well as any other formats that might suit the diversity of research and practice in our field. 

Working Groups  

Working groups are invited to convene at the 2025 ADSA Conference, and we invite members to nominate their working group or express their interest in joining one as part of their proposal. Please note that there will be an online option available for working group sessions only.

Each working group sets its own working practices, and descriptions of the groups and details about their meetings can be found on the ADSA website. In all cases, members are welcome to attend working group meetings without presenting; additionally, any proposals not able to be accommodated within working groups will automatically be considered for inclusion in the wider conference sessions.

Harvey, Mark. "Manaakitanga Me Te Kōrero: Helping Hands and Conversations: Conditions of Possibility in Kindness in Live Art and Performance-Based Art." Knowledge cultures, vol. 9, no. 3, 2021, pp. 139-57, doi:10.22381/kc9320218. 

Hyland, Nicola, and David O’Donnell. Taki Rua + Weaving Stories (Wellington: Huia, forthcoming). 

Kuokkanen, Rauna. “What is Hospitality in the Academy? Epistemic Ignorance and the (Im)Possible Gift.” Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, 30 (2008): 60–82. 10.1080/10714410701821297.  

Moorfield, John C. Te Aka Māori Dictionary, 2024, https://maoridictionary.co.nz/.  

Murray, Simon, and John Keefe, Physical Theatres: A Critical Introduction, 2nd edn (London: Routledge, 2016). 

Te Rongopai Tukiwaho, Bōni, and Molly Mullen. “Taurima Vibes: Economies of manaakitanga and care in Aotearoa New Zealand.” In The Routledge Companion to Applied Performance, ed. by Tim Prentki and Ananda Breed, vol. 1 (London: Routledge, 2020), pp. 43-55. 

Call for Papers: ADSA Conference 

Manaakitanga: Performing Welcome, Care and Respect

Te Whanganui-a-Tara – Wellington, Aotearoa
1 – 5 December 2025

Nāku te rourou nāu te rourou ka ora ai te iwi 

With your basket and my basket, we will sustain everyone 

Manaakitanga is a concept from te ao Māori (the Māori world) which is often translated as “hospitality, kindness, generosity, support – the process of showing respect, generosity and care for others” (Te Aka). Manaakitanga is embedded within the ways we practice and form relationships in theatre and how we, as performers, producers, designers, and storytellers, host an audience as if we were bringing them into our own homes. Manaakitanga “combines the notion of process (-tanga) with manaaki, or sharing of mana” (Mullen and Te Rongopai Tukiwaho 4) where mana refers to “prestige, authority, control, power, influence, status, spiritual power, charisma” (Te Aka). As Mark Harvey explains, Manaakitanga “involves the uplifting of mana or reaffirming the mana of others through actions of generosity that include kindness” (142). Recent discourses around care, accessibility, mobility, and respect have brought attention to the role of the host and questions around their responsibilities to spectators and participants. We invite you to consider the intersections between performance, hospitality, care, and respectful exchange as we negotiate our own roles as ‘hosts’ and 'guests’ in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Wellington, in December 2025.  

Manaakitanga is a critical practice of care, drawing attention to and awareness of our social and cultural responsibilities to all communities invited to work within our spaces. This relates to notions of accessibility, mobility and consent, and negotiating the health and safety policies and protocols of diverse institutions. Manaaki relates to reciprocity and shared responsibilities in blurred contexts, such as the role of an audience in immersive and participatory performance practices. We also consider the role of a physical space as ‘host’ and in the ways we might be received within and transformed by scenography: how we experience the terrain in all its “overlaps, echoes and distinctions” (Murray and Keefe 126).  

Performances can enact manaakitanga through creative process, dramaturgical structure and within the frames of storytelling. An account of the interactions between Māori soldiers and their Italian hosts in World War II, Strange Resting Places (2012) by Rob Mokaraka and Paolo Rotondo is described by David O’Donnell as “an outstanding example of manaakitanga in action (Hyland and O’Donnell). The performance literally starts with an act of hosting, with the cast welcoming the audience into the space, sharing espresso coffee and pastries, followed by a waiata performed by the cast. At the end of the play, a cleansing ceremony is incorporated into the dramaturgy as a ritual act to release the audience from the troubling spaces of war and history, while food and wine are offered to the audience to close. Strange Resting Places is bookended not only with manaakitanga by the host/performers but also follows the pattern of poroporoaki in securing the safety (physical/spiritual) of the manuhiri, or visitors, as they encounter representations of historical trauma. 

Indigenous hospitality is at the core of many First Nations performance practices but also precedes many contemporary gatherings: as Land Acknowledgements and in performances of ritual and ceremony. However, this can sometimes seem “performative” rather than shared or reciprocated. Rauna Kuokkanen (Suomi) asserts First Nations hosts are often “eager to welcome the other because they [want] to learn from the stranger, to be open to the other and to be taught. This kind of hospitality is infinite or radical hospitality that exceeds invitation and thus consists of receiving, welcoming without invitation” (Kuokkanen 72). We invoke this theme as a provocation: questioning the ways we are all interacting with our First Nations partners in the context of our shared, often contested histories. We also seek to interrogate who is being excluded from our performance spaces – and why - as well as consideration of invisible or ‘unwelcome’ audiences. 

We offer the following provocations as starting points for responding to this conference theme: 

• Performing kindness, care, and respect 

• Performance and mobility, migration, refugees, asylum seekers, border closures 

• Hosting events, host responsibilities and spectator relationships 

• Performing welcome: rituals and ceremonies from daily rites to Olympic Opening Ceremonies 

• Kai/food in performance or the performativity of food/cooking – dinner theatre, cooking in theatre 

• Generosity in research, debates around open access and dissemination of performance research 

• Domestic spaces in performance, whanau/family, and intergenerational praxes 

• Travel and touring – forming global connections and maintaining regional relationships through performance exchange 

• Facilitating and celebrating LGBTQIA+ spaces and events 

• Respect and care in representations of gender and sexuality in performance 

• Creating accessible, inclusive, and culturally safe venues and performance spaces 

• Interrogating terminology such as “holding space” and “self care” and the weaponisation of these ideas in performance 

We invite abstracts of 250 words responding to these questions, or other scholarly or creative provocations raised by our conference theme, to be submitted via this form by Friday 28 March 2025. We invite proposals for 20-minute paper presentations, artistic research presentations and performances, workshops and roundtable discussions, as well as any other formats that might suit the diversity of research and practice in our field. 

Working Groups  

Working groups are invited to convene at the 2025 ADSA Conference, and we invite members to nominate their working group or express their interest in joining one as part of their proposal. Please note that there will be an online option available for working group sessions only.

Each working group sets its own working practices, and descriptions of the groups and details about their meetings can be found on the ADSA website. In all cases, members are welcome to attend working group meetings without presenting; additionally, any proposals not able to be accommodated within working groups will automatically be considered for inclusion in the wider conference sessions.

Harvey, Mark. "Manaakitanga Me Te Kōrero: Helping Hands and Conversations: Conditions of Possibility in Kindness in Live Art and Performance-Based Art." Knowledge cultures, vol. 9, no. 3, 2021, pp. 139-57, doi:10.22381/kc9320218. 

Hyland, Nicola, and David O’Donnell. Taki Rua + Weaving Stories (Wellington: Huia, forthcoming). 

Kuokkanen, Rauna. “What is Hospitality in the Academy? Epistemic Ignorance and the (Im)Possible Gift.” Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, 30 (2008): 60–82. 10.1080/10714410701821297.  

Moorfield, John C. Te Aka Māori Dictionary, 2024, https://maoridictionary.co.nz/.  

Murray, Simon, and John Keefe, Physical Theatres: A Critical Introduction, 2nd edn (London: Routledge, 2016). 

Te Rongopai Tukiwaho, Bōni, and Molly Mullen. “Taurima Vibes: Economies of manaakitanga and care in Aotearoa New Zealand.” In The Routledge Companion to Applied Performance, ed. by Tim Prentki and Ananda Breed, vol. 1 (London: Routledge, 2020), pp. 43-55. 

Contemporary Theatre Review welcomes submissions for its upcoming Special Issue, Theatre in Unexpected Places. 

This special issue of Contemporary Theatre Review will examine current practices outside the traditional confines of stages and auditoriums. From digital platforms and augmented reality to community-centred practices and performances in urban, rural, and liminal spaces, theatre is finding new homes and audiences. We invite contributors to reflect on the diverse ways theatre emerges in unexpected places, interrogating what it means for the form, the audience, and the broader cultural landscape. How do these unconventional sites shape theatre’s aesthetics, politics, and accessibility? How might they invite us to revisit or revise our understandings of site-specific or site-sensitive practice? What new stories, communities, and sensibilities are enabled when performance moves beyond the stage?

Possible areas of focus include (but are not limited to):

• Theatre in streets, parks, or reclaimed urban spaces, and its impact on community engagement, political activism, and public discourse.
• Theatre in political and judicial spaces, including performances staged in courthouses, parliamentary buildings, or protest sites, and their role in shaping legal narratives, civic engagement, and public discourse.
• Performance in forests, on beaches, or in wilderness areas that respond to and interact with ecological concerns.
• Travelling performances, roving ensembles, and site-responsive works that are rooted in mobility or migration.
• Theatre as a participatory act within communities, including immersive, interactive, or therapeutic engagements.
• Theatre in virtual and digital spaces, including livestreams, VR/AR performances, social media experiments, and hybrid practices.
• Theatre in refugee camps, conflict zones, or other areas of humanitarian response.

We welcome contributions in a variety of forms, including:

• Essays
• Practice-based reflections
• Provocations (short, critical challenges to existing ideas or norms)
• Manifestoes (articulations of new visions for theatre in unexpected places)

Submissions can range from concise interventions to more developed explorations, with a word limit of 1,000–3,000 words. This shorter format is intended to enable the inclusion of a wide range of contributions in the issue, including ‘rapid response’ engagement with current developments.

Contributors are asked to provide an Abstract of their proposed contribution (300 words) and a short Author bio (150 words) by 1 May 2025.

First drafts of accepted contributions will be due 1 November 2025.

Submissions and inquiries can be directed to Sir Anril Tiatco sptiatco@up.edu.ph and Stephen Greer Stephen.Greer@glasgow.ac.uk.

ADSA are very happy to have welcomed a new Working Group - Technologies in Performance. 

The Technologies in Performance working group has a broad interest in the impact of technology in, on and around performance. We are interested in theoretical, historiographical, aesthetic, experimental, and creative research approaches to the study of technology in performance. Topics include and are not limited to: technology as a dramaturgical element of performance, innovations in production technology (lighting, sound, projection, stage etc.), emerging technologies in performance (robotics, AI/ML, data, mobile computing, VR/AR/MR/XR, etc.), technology in processes (QLAB, Unreal, mobile, Zoom etc.), impacts on audiences (mobiles, headphones, haptics, surveillance etc.); impacts on professional roles, labour and workforce (acting, directing, designing, stage managing etc.); transmedia, marketing, expanded performance; site-responsive, immersive, and everyday performance; performance data, measurement, evaluation, and documentation.

We are planning to meet at the 2025 ADSA conference in Wellington - https://www.adsa.edu.au/next-conference - and would love to see you there. 

More information about the working group can be found on the website https://www.adsa.edu.au/workinggroups

Co-convenors
Abbie Trott, Robert Walton, Bernadette Cochrane. 

• critical studies of a particular playwright, director or company and their plays, productions and/or performances; 
• thematic studies exploring the work of a group of Australian playwrights, theatre companies and/or performance makers; and 
• scholarly books investigating a period, topic or approach in Australian drama, theatre or performance. 

CFP – Archipelagic Performance Histories and Digital Methods

CALL FOR PAPERS DEADLINE: 15 JANUARY 2025

The workshop is jointly organized by the Department of English, Linguistics, and Theatre Studies and the Inter-Asia Engagements Cluster at the Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore.

The workshop aims to explore the historical connections and flows of performance-making and travel across Asian regions, seas, straits, and beyond, focusing on developing research into cultural heritage and past intercultural engagements in this part of the world. It seeks to identify maritime and land routes and geographical nodes that were part of performance networks, touring, diasporic exchanges, and migration of practitioners and troupes from the nineteenth century to the twentieth century. It aims to de-emphasise the continent, sub-continent or mainland as the sole origin of performance practices and instead focus on the flow and circulation of people, practices, and intercultural performance-making over time and transregionally. It recognises these flows as a collective heritage that was interactive and polycentric, rather than exclusive to the histories of nations and linear narratives of historical processes. The concept of ‘archipelago’ (Rae 2019) is incorporated as a metaphor to challenge dominant discourses of continentalism and nation-states. The goal is to decentre knowledge production and retell historical narratives of performance histories across a wider geography based on evolving social and ecological relations.

Proposed papers can seek to uncover familial ties, apprentice-master relations, genealogies, social ties, and cultural exchanges that made possible hybridisation and cross-cultural innovations that came to define performance practices found in Southeast and East Asia and beyond. Divergent routes of performance networks may be addressed alongside imperial routes and Empire touring. Additionally, the workshop will intersect with the field of digital humanities, exploring how digital tools and approaches can contribute to the study of performance histories.

The workshop aims to propel the extensive study of the archipelagic flow and circulation of performance-making and travelling, building on prior research on interculturalism in Southeast and East Asian performance. It will also encourage scholars to engage with digital scholarship and combine historical and archival research with digital approaches to bring about interdisciplinary collaborations and exchanges.

Scholars working on regional case studies, performance databases, and theatre archives are encouraged to submit a proposal. The workshop also welcomes studies that combine digital methods such as network analysis, historical GIS, and visualisations with archival research and data collection across archives and digital collections. It also explores traditional methods and interfaces of storytelling and knowledge production in relation to performance-making and embodied practices. Methodological innovation is welcomed, and the conference themes and topics will encourage collaborative research projects and researchers who use digital approaches in their studies, including those exploring the possibilities of augmented and virtual reality technologies for rethinking performance. By combining approaches across disciplines, we hope to find new ways to tell and experience stories of our shared and unshared heritages, legacies, and genealogies of performance making in the region.

Topics may resemble (but are by no means limited to) the following examples:

1. Who were the actors, agents, commissioners, and nodes responsible for forming and shaping transregional relationships, and who made possible the travelling of performance practices across geographical regions? What were some of these social relations within a troupe, a company or between individuals who facilitated these travels and theatre migration?
2. What were the technologies that made these exchanges possible? And how did they contribute to creating and maintaining these performance networks? How can new digital technologies create platforms of exchange and dialogue based on alternative geographies and imaginaries of connection?
3. Where were the places of performances and what were their individual and collective histories? How were these places connected? How did each performance or production fit into the ecosystem of each ‘place’? And how were such sites part of a wider regional or transregional network of performance travels?
4. How did the travels in turn change the way the performers were received back home? Did performers adapt and respond to local tastes and expectations as they travelled from one place to another? What repertoire did performers acquire, invent, or carry forward from their travels? 
5.  Compared to travel routes shaped by the Empire, what other routes were travelled by the performers of diasporic communities? For instance, Cantonese opera troupes toured the Australian goldfields in Victoria during the Gold Rush from the 1850s to 1870s. What places were included in the itineraries of these troupes and what networks existed in the nineteenth century that made these transregional tours possible?

SUBMISSION OF PROPOSALS

Paper proposals should include a title, an abstract (200 words maximum), and a brief personal biography (about 150 words) for submission by 15 January 2025. Please also include a statement confirming that your proposed paper has not been published or committed elsewhere, and that you are willing to revise the version of your paper presented at the workshop for potential inclusion in an edited volume.

Proposals are to be submitted to valerie.yeo@nus.edu.sg using this template. Authors of selected proposals can expect to be notified by mid-February 2025. Workshop presenters will be required to submit short draft papers (3,000-5,000 words) by 10 June 2025. These papers will be circulated to fellow panelists and discussants in advance of the workshop and need not be fully polished.

This workshop will be held in person. The Asia Research Institute will provide overseas participants with full or partial airfare funding as well as three nights of accommodation in Singapore. Please indicate in the proposal form if you require funding support.

WORKSHOP CONVENORS

Dr Alvin Eng Hui LIM | Department of English, Linguistics and Theatre Studies, National University of Singapore
Dr Hedren Wai Yuan SUM | Department of English, Linguistics and Theatre Studies, National University of Singapore
Dr Kyueun KIM | Department of English, Linguistics and Theatre Studies, National University of Singapore
Prof Tim WINTER | Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore

Call for Papers: ADSA Conference 

Manaakitanga: Performing Welcome, Care and Respect

Te Whanganui-a-Tara – Wellington, Aotearoa
1 – 5 December 2025

Nāku te rourou nāu te rourou ka ora ai te iwi 

With your basket and my basket, we will sustain everyone 

Manaakitanga is a concept from te ao Māori (the Māori world) which is often translated as “hospitality, kindness, generosity, support – the process of showing respect, generosity and care for others” (Te Aka). Manaakitanga is embedded within the ways we practice and form relationships in theatre and how we, as performers, producers, designers, and storytellers, host an audience as if we were bringing them into our own homes. Manaakitanga “combines the notion of process (-tanga) with manaaki, or sharing of mana” (Mullen and Te Rongopai Tukiwaho 4) where mana refers to “prestige, authority, control, power, influence, status, spiritual power, charisma” (Te Aka). As Mark Harvey explains, Manaakitanga “involves the uplifting of mana or reaffirming the mana of others through actions of generosity that include kindness” (142). Recent discourses around care, accessibility, mobility, and respect have brought attention to the role of the host and questions around their responsibilities to spectators and participants. We invite you to consider the intersections between performance, hospitality, care, and respectful exchange as we negotiate our own roles as ‘hosts’ and 'guests’ in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Wellington, in December 2025.  

Manaakitanga is a critical practice of care, drawing attention to and awareness of our social and cultural responsibilities to all communities invited to work within our spaces. This relates to notions of accessibility, mobility and consent, and negotiating the health and safety policies and protocols of diverse institutions. Manaaki relates to reciprocity and shared responsibilities in blurred contexts, such as the role of an audience in immersive and participatory performance practices. We also consider the role of a physical space as ‘host’ and in the ways we might be received within and transformed by scenography: how we experience the terrain in all its “overlaps, echoes and distinctions” (Murray and Keefe 126).  

Performances can enact manaakitanga through creative process, dramaturgical structure and within the frames of storytelling. An account of the interactions between Māori soldiers and their Italian hosts in World War II, Strange Resting Places (2012) by Rob Mokaraka and Paolo Rotondo is described by David O’Donnell as “an outstanding example of manaakitanga in action (Hyland and O’Donnell). The performance literally starts with an act of hosting, with the cast welcoming the audience into the space, sharing espresso coffee and pastries, followed by a waiata performed by the cast. At the end of the play, a cleansing ceremony is incorporated into the dramaturgy as a ritual act to release the audience from the troubling spaces of war and history, while food and wine are offered to the audience to close. Strange Resting Places is bookended not only with manaakitanga by the host/performers but also follows the pattern of poroporoaki in securing the safety (physical/spiritual) of the manuhiri, or visitors, as they encounter representations of historical trauma. 

Indigenous hospitality is at the core of many First Nations performance practices but also precedes many contemporary gatherings: as Land Acknowledgements and in performances of ritual and ceremony. However, this can sometimes seem “performative” rather than shared or reciprocated. Rauna Kuokkanen (Suomi) asserts First Nations hosts are often “eager to welcome the other because they [want] to learn from the stranger, to be open to the other and to be taught. This kind of hospitality is infinite or radical hospitality that exceeds invitation and thus consists of receiving, welcoming without invitation” (Kuokkanen 72). We invoke this theme as a provocation: questioning the ways we are all interacting with our First Nations partners in the context of our shared, often contested histories. We also seek to interrogate who is being excluded from our performance spaces – and why - as well as consideration of invisible or ‘unwelcome’ audiences. 

We offer the following provocations as starting points for responding to this conference theme: 

• Performing kindness, care, and respect 

• Performance and mobility, migration, refugees, asylum seekers, border closures 

• Hosting events, host responsibilities and spectator relationships 

• Performing welcome: rituals and ceremonies from daily rites to Olympic Opening Ceremonies 

• Kai/food in performance or the performativity of food/cooking – dinner theatre, cooking in theatre 

• Generosity in research, debates around open access and dissemination of performance research 

• Domestic spaces in performance, whanau/family, and intergenerational praxes 

• Travel and touring – forming global connections and maintaining regional relationships through performance exchange 

• Facilitating and celebrating LGBTQIA+ spaces and events 

• Respect and care in representations of gender and sexuality in performance 

• Creating accessible, inclusive, and culturally safe venues and performance spaces 

• Interrogating terminology such as “holding space” and “self care” and the weaponisation of these ideas in performance 

We invite abstracts of 250 words responding to these questions, or other scholarly or creative provocations raised by our conference theme, to be submitted via this form by Friday 28 March 2025. We invite proposals for 20-minute paper presentations, artistic research presentations and performances, workshops and roundtable discussions, as well as any other formats that might suit the diversity of research and practice in our field. 

Working Groups  

Working groups are invited to convene at the 2025 ADSA Conference, and we invite members to nominate their working group or express their interest in joining one as part of their proposal.  

Each working group sets its own working practices, and descriptions of the groups and details about their meetings can be found on the ADSA website. In all cases, members are welcome to attend working group meetings without presenting; additionally, any proposals not able to be accommodated within working groups will automatically be considered for inclusion in the wider conference sessions.

Harvey, Mark. "Manaakitanga Me Te Kōrero: Helping Hands and Conversations: Conditions of Possibility in Kindness in Live Art and Performance-Based Art." Knowledge cultures, vol. 9, no. 3, 2021, pp. 139-57, doi:10.22381/kc9320218. 

Hyland, Nicola, and David O’Donnell. Taki Rua + Weaving Stories (Wellington: Huia, forthcoming). 

Kuokkanen, Rauna. “What is Hospitality in the Academy? Epistemic Ignorance and the (Im)Possible Gift.” Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, 30 (2008): 60–82. 10.1080/10714410701821297.  

Moorfield, John C. Te Aka Māori Dictionary, 2024, https://maoridictionary.co.nz/.  

Murray, Simon, and John Keefe, Physical Theatres: A Critical Introduction, 2nd edn (London: Routledge, 2016). 

Te Rongopai Tukiwaho, Bōni, and Molly Mullen. “Taurima Vibes: Economies of manaakitanga and care in Aotearoa New Zealand.” In The Routledge Companion to Applied Performance, ed. by Tim Prentki and Ananda Breed, vol. 1 (London: Routledge, 2020), pp. 43-55. 

2025 AusAct Conference

Transforming Safety & Identity in Training

Flinders University, Adelaide
Thursday 6 — Saturday 8 March 2025

• Uncomfortable vs unsafe: navigating intergenerational perspectives on language used in performance training.
• Navigating the assessment of embodied work in a university environment: balancing absenteeism, non-participation and access.
• Adapting training methodologies for neurodivergent students.
• Navigating issues of identity, authenticity, and transformation in performance.
• Managing conflict and miscommunication in the studio.
• Actor training terminology and gender identity and expression.
• Touch without touch: human contact when contact isn’t possible.

• Paper presentations, for 20-minute academic papers that interrogate some aspect of historical and/or contemporary actor training, identity and safety; and
• Practical workshops, for 60- or 90-minute training sessions that offer an embodied exploration of an advance in training practices. We are particularly interested in sessions in which undergraduate students can participate.

• maximum 6,000 words.
• maximum 4,000 words.

• Proposals/first drafts: Monday 20 January 2025.
• Notification of acceptance: Friday 7 February 2025.
• Full drafts: Friday 23 May 2025
• Peer review: June-July 2025
• Final deadline for papers: Friday 26 September 2025.
• Publication: October 2025.

• Performance or drama and care ethics
• Relational, spatial and/or temporal patterns arising when performance or drama projects adopt care as a guiding principle
• Metrics for success, time pressure and care-full performance
• Performance or drama and ‘after-care’
• Performance or drama and environmental care
• The politics of care and/ or discomfort in historical or contemporary performance or drama practices
• Relationships between discomfort and agency in care and performance or drama contexts
• Temporality and the value of discomfort, e.g. the long-term benefits of short-term discomfort or shock in performance or drama
• Re-negotiation of ‘ambiguous’, ‘ephemeral’ or ‘static’ modalities of practice in socially engaged performance, arts and care contexts
• Risk management and ‘safetyism’ in performance or drama training, institutions, events and works
• Instrumentalization of performance practices for health and well-being.

1. James Thompson, Care Aesthetics: For Artful Care and Careful Art (London & New York: Routledge, 2023) 10.
2. Ibid., 100.
3. Ibid., 6, 10-11, 100.
4. Laura Salisbury and Lisa Baraitser, ‘Depressing Time: Waiting, Melancholia, and the Psychoanalytic Practice of Care’, in Elisabeth Kirtsoglou and Bob Simpson (eds), The Time of Anthropology: Studies of Contemporary Chronopolitics (Abingdon: Routledge, 2021) 104, 113.
5. Berenice Fisher and Joan Tronto, ‘Toward a Feminist Theory of Caring’, in Emily K. Abel & Margaret K. Nelson (eds), Circles of Care: Work and Identity in Women’s Lives (Albany, NY: SUNY, 1990) 40.
6. Rachelle Chadwick, ‘On the Politics of Discomfort’, Feminist Theory, 22: 4 (2021) 560-561, 564
7. Rachelle Chadwick, ‘On the Politics of Discomfort’, Feminist Theory, 22: 4 (2021) 563

• Marlis Thiersch Prize for research excellence in an English-language article or book chapter published anywhere in the world in the broad field of theatre and performance studies. (OPEN)

• Philip Parsons Prize for a senior student (honours or postgraduate) who has completed a performance as research project. (OPEN)

• Rob Jordan Prize for the best book on a theatre, drama or performance studies related subject published in the previous two years. Awarded every TWO years. (OPEN)

• Flinders University Ausstage Prize to recognise research excellence that utilises Ausstage in articles, books, and non-traditional digital outputs. (OPEN)

• Marlis Thiersch Prize for research excellence in an English-language article or book chapter published anywhere in the world in the broad field of theatre and performance studies. (OPEN)

• Philip Parsons Prize for a senior student (honours or postgraduate) who has completed a performance as research project. (OPEN)

• Rob Jordan Prize for the best book on a theatre, drama or performance studies related subject published in the previous two years. Awarded every TWO years. (OPEN)

• Flinders University AusStage Prize to recognise research excellence that utilises AusStage in articles, books, and non-traditional digital outputs. (OPEN)

• maximum 6,000 words.
• maximum 4,000 words.

• short provocations or reflections of maximum 1,500 words.

• Proposals/first drafts: Monday 19th August 2024.
• Notification of acceptance: Friday 30th August 2024.
• Full drafts: Friday 25th October 2024.
• Peer review: October – December 2024.
• Final deadline for papers: Friday 21st February 2025.
• Publication: April 2025.

• Musicals and popular entertainment
• Musicals and linguistic diversity
• Musicals and traditional theatre
• Musicals in unconventional venues
• Musicals and touring
• Musicals and adaptation
• Broadway, West End and musicals in Taiwan
• Transnational musicals and local productions
• Musicals in Asia
• Musicals and criticism

• Form open for submissions: June 6th
• Submission close: EXTENDED TO JULY 12th 
• The Subcommittee will call for ADSA members interested in being mentors through another form (date TBC).
• After submissions close, the Subcommittee will meet to discuss the applications and match mentees to mentors
• Mentors and mentees will join the Subcommittee in a virtual meeting to start the program in September 2024
•  

• You are a current paid-up financial ADSA member,
• You have submitted your PhD, and
• If you are employed by an education institution (this is not a requirement), you currently hold a position no higher than a Level B.

• queer archives and archiving
• queer work in/with decolonial critique
• queer intersections with race, ethnicity, nation, migration and diaspora 
• First Nations queer work    
• queer live art
• drag in all its diversity and international locations
• queer’s intersections with disabilities
• queer takes on class and poverty in performance-making
• trans performance
• performance work created by trans writers
• performance work centring trans performers, stories and experiences
• performance work directed by trans directors, makers, practitioners
• transness as creative methodology
• national/international perspectives on queer performance cultures
• queer theatre-making: playwriting, directing, dramaturgy
• queer nightlife performance and dance cultures
• queer plays on mainstages
• musicality and queerness
• queer performance histories and historiographies
• fatness and queerness
• queer sound
• queerness and affect
• queer design
• queer making processes
• queer hauntings and hauntologies
• HIV and AIDS in performance
• contagion and viral dramaturgies

• Celeste Rodrigues Luoro (The University of Western Australia) and Glenys Collard (Mallee Aboriginal Corporation): Sharing their journey through their First Nations-le collaboration to study Australian Aboriginal English, an Indigenised variety of English spoken by approximately 80% of First Nations people in Australia (Rodríguez Louro & Collard, 2020,2021a,b). Their sociolinguistic research into Aboriginal English as spoken in Nyungar country, Southwest Western Australia, has allowed them to record and analyse the way that people use language in everyday contexts.
• Daz Chandler, creative producer and interdisciplinary storyteller: Speaking from their background in documentary filmmaking, broadcast journalism and media and human rights advocacy, Daz shares their work exploring the intersections of philosophy, ethics, history, technology and parallel worlding frameworks. They will speak on their current practice steering into immersive, experiential spaces using quantum mechanics and ‘parallel futuring’ frameworks, and the role AI and technological advances play in capturing - and sharing - our voices and stories.
• Nazaree (Naz) Dickerson, Actor/Writer/Director and Associate Lecturer at VCA: Naz is a Wardandi/Bibbulman Noongar and Burmese person from Boorloo (Perth), whose work explores themes of experiencing the world as a neuro-divergent, queer, First Nations woman. She will unpack the complexities of ‘Voice’ through a First Nations perspective and share moments where ‘Voice’ has played a pivotal role in affecting change for individuals and community.
• Philip-Michael Pandongan, aka Yung Philly, freestyle rap artist: Yung Philly bring his stagecraft, wit, and panache off the stage and into community spaces in his Rap workshops. Informed by his work with various community arts practitioners, as well as his mentoring of young people from Melbourne’s outer north, Yung Philly has developed Rap workshops that help undergraduate Theatre students connect to heightened language. Explore using rap to organically stimulate the articulators, exercise wit and wordplay, and take a deep dive into mood and feeling. Yung Philly’s workshops offer an engaging, contemporary approach to exploring rhythm, flow, sense and meaning.

• How do artists create work, or engage with creative materials and audiences guided by notions of love or compassion? What impact does this focus have on participants, audiences, and communities?
• How can demonstrations or performances of love, both within and for marginalised communities, operate as radical acts of resistance or liberation?
• How can love and compassion be strategically deployed by scholars and artists to decolonise their practices to enhance the dignity of their subjects, collaborators, or colleagues?
• In what ways does love feature within artworks that aim to resolve conflict and build bridges?
• How can scholars and practitioners show compassion for the cultural and creative practices of artists within mutual spaces? What happens when cultural practices are ‘un-loved’?
• How is ‘showing’ compassion or respect more than a performative gesture, for example, in land acknowledgements, in pōwhiri or other rites of welcome?
• How might explorations of love and compassion support a decolonised teaching approach? In what ways can creative methods in teaching address the lack of love and compassion in our educational institutions?
• In what ways do ‘economies of affection’ (Cram 2021) feature as part of performance practices? And in what ways do they restore relationships and personhood?
• What are the affordances of theorising through compassion within performances of restorative justice? What role does compassion play in affective representations of both perpetrators and survivors of crime in artistic forms?

Healing Stories Symposium:
First Nations Performing Arts and Wellbeing

Where and when

Registration

"Walking as applied critical practices: methodologies, pedagogies and performances"

Editorial Team: Dee Heddon, Stephanie Springgay, Harry Wilson 

The dynamic relationships between walking, performance and performativity are long-standing, from psychogeographical drifts, which trace capitalism’s appropriations and productions of place, to protest marches which re-claim the streets as a demonstration of power, from ceremonial walks as memorialisations of place, to (mis)guided tours which rewrite partial histories, from attentive walking as ways to know and feel differently, to technologically-enabled walking performances that take the city as their stage. Walking as a mobile method of applied critical practice - with bodies located in and moving through space – offers a plurality of ways to explore, feel, attend, make, enact, connect, contest and demand. Walking is often simultaneously method (a process of rigorous investigation), pedagogy (a mode of engaged learning), and practice (a way of doing and sharing). 

For many, COVID-19 and its attendant restrictions focused a spotlight on walking. For some, it became permitted and encouraged as daily exercise or a safe way to travel, while for others, it became out of reach because of policing or total lock downs. Walking was experienced as liberating, boring, necessary, scary, a lifesaver, and forbidden (Rose, Heddon, Law et al., 2022). Practitioners and teachers of drama and performance engaged with walking, some for the first time, as a means to continue their work, finding innovative ways to offer continued access to social, cultural and learning experiences. However, barriers to walking – time, access, confidence, safety – were amplified, including the affordances given to different bodies that walk in different places. Inequalities in the Global North and South were also magnified during this time, including people’s access to walking. This themed edition on walking as a critical applied practice takes its cue from the multiple ways in which walking was oriented during COVID-19, to consider how walking can be harnessed as creative, critical and pedagogical resource in an ongoing/’post’-pandemic world.

We invite submissions which engage with the diversity of walking as methodology, pedagogy and performance, attentive not just to walking’s potential as a critical applied practice, but also its current exclusions and barriers:  

• Walking work in and beyond COVID-19 

• Walking as a creative and investigative practice (Stenna and Marland, 2020, p. 1) – embodied, located, somatic, and affective – and mobile research method (O’Neill and Roberts, 2020) 

• ‘Walking-with’ as a form of solidarity, unlearning, and critical engagement and a mode of ‘politics-in-movement' (Springgay and Truman, 2019, p. 12)  

• Walking as protest, resistance and intervention  

• Walking and transformation 

• Walking and relationality  

• Walking, health and wellbeing 

• Walking and pedestrian in/equity (Heddon, Qualmann, Rose et al., forthcoming) 

• Walking and presumptions of democracy (Arora, 2019, p. 173) 

• Walking and the ‘postcolonial body/site dialectic’ (Murali, 2017, p. 86) 

• Walking and decolonization 

• Solitary and/or group walking practices 

• Walking as a socially engaged practice 

• Virtual walking, remote walking, proxy walking and surrogate walking  

• Walking facilitated by/with digital technologies 

Submission Instructions 

We welcome research articles (c.6,000) and other forms of contributions such as interviews, provocations, practitioner statements and case studies (c.1,500) as well as creative contributions, such as photo essays, walking scores, or online outputs (10-15 minutes). 

Online outputs could include peripatetic conversations between researchers or practitioners recorded on the move, clips of performances and/or workshops, and more. All submissions will be reviewed by two anonymous referees and by the editors. 

Please send 300-word proposals for contributions, plus 100-word biographies for each contributor, to Deirdre.Heddon@glasgow.ac.uk 

• Deadline for proposals: 1 December 2023 

• Deadline for first full draft: 1 Sept 2024 

• Deadline for final submission: end Sept 2025 

Editorial Biographies 

Professor Dee Heddon holds the James Arnott Chair in Drama at the University of Glasgow and has practiced and published widely on walking as a creative practice. In 2012, she co-founded with Misha Myers, the ongoing creative-research project, The Walking Library. She is currently completing an AHRC-funded project, Walking Publics/Walking Arts: Walking, Wellbeing and Community during COVID-19, a collaboration with Maggie O’Neill, Morag Rose, Clare Qualmann, and Harry Wilson. 

Professor Stephanie Springgay is Director of the School of the Arts (SOTA), at McMaster University, Canada. She is a leading scholar of research-creation with a focus on walking, affect, queer theory, and contemporary art as pedagogy. She runs WalkingLab, an SSHRC-funded international research-creation project with a goal to create a collaborative network and partnership between artists, arts organizations, activists, scholars and educators interested in walking, movement, and sensory knowledge. Springgay’s other funded project is The Pedagogical Impulse. She is the author, with Sarah E. Truman, of Walking Methodologies in a More-than-Human World: WalkingLab (2019).  

Dr Harry Wilson is an Early Career Researcher in Digital Theatre at the University of Bristol. His research focuses on interdisciplinary explorations of live art and performance, photography, documentation, digital art and new media and he has recently been exploring intersections between immersive technologies and intimate performance, including virtual and remote walks. 

References 

• Arora, Swati, “Walking at Midnight: Women and Danger on Delhi’s Streets”, Journal of Public Pedagogies, Number 4, 2019. 

• Heddon, Dee, Clare Qualmann, Morag Rose et al., “Just Walking: creative methods towards pedestrian equity”, in Coping Creatively, eds. Victoria Tischler and Karen Gray, Manchester: Manchester University Press (forthcoming). 

• Murali, Sharanya, “A Manifesto to Decolonise Walking”, Performance Research, 22:3, 2017.  

• O’Neill, Maggie and Brian Roberts, Walking Methods: Research on the Move, London: Routledge, 2020. 

• Rose, Morag, Dee Heddon, Matthew Law et al., #WalkCreate: Understanding Walking and Creativity During COVID-19. Walking Publics/Walking Arts Public Report (2022).  

• Springgay, Stephanie and Sarah E. Truman, Walking Methodologies in a More-than-Human World: WalkingLab, London: Routledge, 2019. 

• Stenning, Anna and Pippa Marland, “Introduction”, in Walking, Landscape and Environment, eds. David Borthwick, Pippa Marland and Anna Stenning, London: Routledge, 2019. 

Professor Deirdre Heddon, PhD, FRSE

James Arnott Chair in Drama & Head of Theatre Studies 

University of Glasgow 

https://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/cca/staff/deirdreheddon/ 

PI Walking Publics/Walking Art: Walking, Wellbeing & Community During COVID-19

CoI, newLEAF

Job Opportunity: Assistant Professor in Pasifika Theatre and Performance Studies, UCLA

Job Opportunity: Positions in Acting, WAAPA

• Senior Lecturer (Acting), the Course Coordinator role; and
• Lecturer (Acting), the core acting skills teacher in the team. 

Performing Care and Carelessness: An interdisciplinary conference delivered in hybrid format

Symposium

Precarity, Creative Arts and Wellbeing

• What roles do the arts play in relation to experiences of precarity?
• How can the creative arts help to communicate the lived experience of precarity?
• What needs to be considered (ethically) before using the arts to communicate such experiences?
• What role might the arts play in addressing factors that contribute to precarity and advancing the rights of the precariat?
• What innovative research methods can be used to understand the contribution of the creative arts to the well-being of precariat communities?

Call for Papers: The S-Word, 2024

Stand in Place / Stanislavsky and Place

4 — 6 April 2024
WAAPA, Edith Cowan University
Perth/Boorloo, Western Australia

1. Performance and theatre in relation to ideas of being in place and being out of place
2. Stanislavskian performance in your place (what changes with/in it?) 
3. Placemaking and theatre making 
4. Futures of Eco dramaturgy and theatre form
5. Decolonisation strategies and First Nation knowledge of place and performance 
6. Beyond Stanislavski, extending his ideas in concepts of place/space 
7. Training in relation to ideas of place including but not limited to intercultural/transcultural form and practice
8. Site specific and place specific performance modes in relationship to realism, Stanislavsky and actor and audience relationship
9. Movement, body weather and other performance modalities and training methodologies.

2023 ADSA Conference 

Archives, Artists & Absences

Kaurna Country, Adelaide
Monday 27 November – Friday 1 December

Performance Research

Call for Reviews Edtior

• Monitors press catalogues and selects the works to be reviewed
• Commissions reviewers for each review/receives submissions for reviews
• Liaises with relevant presses to secure a review copy text for contributing reviewers
• Supports first-time reviewers in shaping their submissions in terms of content and style
• Liaises with the designated managing editor to support final revisions

2023 Annual Conference

SAVE THE DATE: 27 NOVEMBER — 1 DECEMBER

PhD Scholarship, Murdoch University

 “Life after digitisation: future-proofing WA’s vulnerable cultural heritage”

We have extended the deadline for our special issue at RiDE: Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance on the topic of solidarity by 3 more weeks (April 5); please see call below.

We invite all forms of contribution, including articles, short reflective essays, interviews or other artistic responses to the topic. We also welcome contributions from PGRs.

RiDE: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance
THEMED ISSUE 29:3
Call for Papers

Performing Solidarities or Solidarities performed
Edited by Réka Polonyi and Kirsten Sadeghi-Yekta

October 17, 2019. Riots broke out in Lebanon in response to heightened economic pressure and corruption scandals surrounding the political elite. Within days, people flooded the streets, repurposed public spaces, organised public debates and mass actions. As a resident at the time, I, Réka, found myself caught up in trying to find my place as both a foreign national and an ally to the struggle of my Lebanese friends and colleagues. Do I stand alongside them, shout the chants in my rusty Arabic, share the face cloth when there’s tear gas? Or do I stand quietly on the side - present, but on the margins? This was not ‘my fight’, I was often reminded; it was clear that I was here to listen, not necessarily to be heard or noticed. I soon found my place: I joined the garbage collective, a group of volunteers who met up every morning to pick up the rubbish on the streets of the protests. Here, in the sleepy hours of the morning, no one questioned who I was, or why I was there: every revolution leaves some rubbish in its wake.

The Lebanese riots bring to light various concerns around the idea of solidarity, or the idea of ‘unity (as of a group or class) that produces or is based on community of interests, objectives, and standards’ (Merriam-Webster). When does a ‘quiet’ act of solidarity speak louder than its more directly-recognised, public enactments? How is it performed without necessarily drawing attention to its enactment, and when is this the appropriate response? In the immediacy of an event, how can solidarity be embodied, rather than stated? In this themed issue, we ask, what purpose does solidarity serve in applied theatre and performance? We are particularly interested in capturing the possibly ‘quiet’, micro-practices of solidarity that occur not only within sites of struggle, but also in everyday life.

Critical positionality is a feature of solidarity. Many aspects of solidarity are implicit in works of applied theatre and performance, which are deeply embedded in community involvement and rely on one’s critical positionality. Participatory theatre-making often values relationality and involves the creation of meaningful and respectful environments. And yet the word ‘solidarity’ is not commonly referred to within current scholarship in applied theatre arts. Solidarity is articulated as a moment of inter-relational care - of ‘affective solidarity’ (Thompson 2015) - which deliberately counters a ‘careless’ society. Is solidarity, then, an act of attentiveness, kindness and attunement? Or, on the contrary, is it a process of recognising differences and distinctiveness in personal opinions, behaviours and actions, rather than of ‘finding common grounds’ or identifying others ‘like us’ (Walhof 2006)? Diana Taylor (2020) argues for being ‘presente’ with and alongside participants. ‘To be’, she writes, ‘I have to walk and talk with others’ (Taylor 2020, 2). Negotiating the idea of presence enables us to re-examine what she calls a form of ‘cognitive imperialism’ within our artistic practices. In other words, walking and talking alongside others, and at times deliberately choosing to be silent and to listen, can both be forms of solidarity. In Taylor’s work, solidarity is implied in the idea of non-presence or in the act of deliberate silence - and in what silence can signify in applied theatre practices as a way to listen, to hear, and not to interrupt. When is the knowledge of when to stay quiet a form of solidarity (if at all)? Similarly to Diana Taylor’s questioning of ‘cognitive imperialism’ through presence, activist and scholar Harsha Walia calls for replacing a ‘politics of solidarity’ with a ‘practice of decolonisation’. She argues that this involves creating ‘a radical terrain for struggle where our common visions for justice do not erase our different social locations, and similarly, that our differing identities do not prevent us from walking together towards transformation and mutual respect’ (Walia 2012: 254). Is solidarity then - instead of avoiding conflicts of beliefs - a way to engage with a multitude of voices potentially all existing within dissonance? The lack of focused theorisation of solidarity in applied theatre and performance – and the sense that applied theatre assumes it is performing solidarity – asks for this urgent themed issue.

The last few years have seen various expressions of solidarity in relation to tragedies around the world. The global COVID-19 pandemic, the killing of George Floyd and the (re)ignited Black Lives Matter movement, the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, the war in Ukraine, the women’s movement in Iran, are just a few examples of moments when individuals were engaged in finding their performance(s) of solidarity. Whether it was the act of ‘clapping for the health care workers’ (during lockdown in the UK and Canada), uploading a blank social media profile photo (as a sign of allyship with BLM), or flying kites (see Good Chance Theatre’s Kite Festival for Afghanistan), we have had to locate and navigate our positions as being spectators-in-solidarity, participants-in-solidarity, or marching in solidarity ‘alongside’ others. Some joined mass, performed actions of solidarity - such as protests or on social media - whereas others felt less inclined to join in what could arguably be seen as a spectacle or commodification of solidarity (Nash 2008; Vastergaard 2008). Large, visible enactments of solidarity, although often very effective in inciting mass participation, can also be seen as narcissistic sentimentalism (Nash 2008: 177). Media scholar Lilie Chouliaraki, for instance, extensively writes on the critical emergence of a ‘post-humanitarian’ solidarity, which is made of loud gestures that provide an instant sense of gratification and reveal more about the individual self rather than the cause, or the ‘vulnerable other’ (2011). Chouliaraki believes we are thus becoming ‘ironic spectators’ (Chouliaraki 2013) of things going wrong in the world. Tensions in these ‘louder’ forms can also be noted by expressions of solidarity arising from grassroots and media generated public debates in which ‘everyday people participate in unequal ways in constructing this debate and its parameters’ (Siapera 2019), where solidarity is becoming an expression that is widely accessible, but potentially more equalized in access rather than in nature. Spectacles of solidarity - loud, statement-led - are nuanced in complexity, as intention does not always correlate with best practices. There is a story told by the activist artist Banksy, during his work among many other street artists leaving their marks of solidarity on the West Bank’s Separation Wall in the occupied Palestinian Territories (recounted in Parry 2010: 10):

Old Man: You paint the wall, you make it look beautiful.
Banksy: Thanks.
Old Man: We don’t want it to be beautiful. We hate this wall, go home.

The questions this raises for applied theatre and performance are how best practices relate to critical positionality, and how good intentions of ‘performing solidarity’ can potentially harm the people and communities involved.

Commonly-recognised forms of solidarity are also visible in the theatre arts industry, as Bree Hadley (2020) points out in her work on allies, ally skills and allyship in disability arts. Performances of solidarity by ‘allies of convenience’ are aimed to benefit the individual and can look like a number of things: ‘be it tokenistic mainstream work, community work facilitated by allies who fail to afford disabled artists control and/or financial benefit, or companies that present disabled artists work but only in tagged ‘disability arts’ programmes separate to their main activities’ (Hadley 2020: 179). The kind of solidarity that valued allies do falls in the skill set described by Hadley as: ‘professional, social, and singular – all allies must remember their privilege, listen, accept the realities oppressed people describe, and allow oppressed colleagues and/or audiences to speak for themselves’ (180). Bradley endorses this form of ‘social allyship’ in disability arts, as it can be a start of outlining the requirements for professional, social and aesthetic support for artworkers (185).

Can solidarity be seen as reciprocal co-perception (Walhof 2006) in which teachings of otherness are vital? Our interest in quiet, micro practices of solidarity in applied theatre and performance follows the rationale that these performances often go unnoticed, or do not necessarily enter the scope and language of more commonly recognised acts of solidarity. They are not the loud, deliberate brush strokes on a giant separation wall. They are not always clear, and well-defined forms of expression. Although the editors of this themed issue recognise the significance and importance of acts that catch the public’s and authorities’ attention, what does it look like when, as philosopher Gadamer (2009) proposes, solidarity does not leave the other completely other, nor does it make the other same? Is there even reciprocity in acts (or intention) of solidarity? If not, is this vital for the work that we are undertaking?

Format
For this special themed issue, we are inviting research articles (6000 words), as well as reflective accounts of artistic works, interviews, and other conceptual explorations of solidarity (1500 words) in relation to the encounters being made in applied theatre and in relation to the positionality of our work. All submissions will be reviewed by the editors and blind peer reviewed at least once prior to final acceptance.

Possible topics
Small/quiet acts of solidarity in applied theatre and performance
Challenges or ethical limitations within acts of solidarity
Solidarity as reciprocal
Absence (in solidarity)
Solidarity as spectacle
Embodiment and solidarity
Solidarity and decolonialist practices
‘Making’ or ‘doing’ solidarity vs ‘being in’ solidarity
Practices/limitations of allyship
Nuanced practices of activist presence/co-presence

Please send your proposed abstract of 300-500 words and 100 words biography to Réka Polonyi (email) and Kirsten Sadeghi-Yekta (email) by 5 April, 2023.

Full papers will be expected by September 1, 2023 and publication is estimated for summer 2024. Submissions will all go through one or more rounds of blind peer review. Please feel free to get in touch if you have any questions.

ksadeghi@uvic.ca
reka.polonyi@manchester.ac.uk

Timeframe
Proposal for contributions: April 5, 2023
Final Publication of accepted submissions: Summer 2024

References:
Chouliaraki, Lilie. 2013. The ironic spectator: Solidarity in the age of post-humanitarianism. John Wiley & Sons.
Chouliaraki, Lilie. 2011. “Improper distance: towards a critical account of solidarity as irony.” International journal of cultural studies 14(4): 363-381.
Gadamer, Hans-Georg. 2009. “Friendship and Solidarity.” Research in Phenomenology 39(1): 3–12.
Hadley, Bree. 2020. “Allyship in disability arts: roles, relationships, and practices.” Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance 25(2): 178-194.
Nash, Kate. 2008. “Global citizenship as show business: the cultural politics of Make Poverty History.” Media, Culture & Society 30(2): 167–181.
Parry, William .2010. Against the Wall: The Art of Resistance in Palestine. London: Pluto Press.
Siapira, Eugenia. 2019. “Refugee solidarity in Europe: Shifting the discourse.” European Journal of Cultural Studies 22(2): 245-266.
Taylor, Diane. 2020. Presente! The Politics of Presence. Durham: Duke University Press.
Thompson, James. 2015. “Towards an aesthetics of care.” Research in Drama Education: Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance 20(4): 430-441.
Vestergaard, Anne. 2008. “Humanitarian branding and the media: The case of Amnesty International.” Journal of language and politics 7(3): 471-493.
Walhof, Darren R. 2006. “Friendship, Otherness, and Gadamer's Politics of Solidarity.” Political Theory (34)5: 569-593.
Walia, Harsha. 2012. “Moving beyond a politics of solidarity toward a practice of decolonization.” In .), Organize!: Building from the local for global justice, edited by Eric Shragge, Jill Hanley, and Aziz Choudry, 240–253. Los Angeles: PM Press.

Job Opportunity: Lecturer in Theatre Studies, University of Melbourne

Performance Paradigm 17 (2022)

Perform or Else? Revisiting Jon McKenzie's Work in the Post-Pandemic World

Job Opportunity: First Nations Writer's Fellowship, University of Adelaide

Call for Proposals: Women’s Innovations in Theatre, Dance, and Performance
Volume 3: Designers & Crafters

Co-edited by Greer Crawley and Carolina E. Santo

Proposals due: 15 April 2023

• Who are the women who made significant innovations and contributions as designers and stagecrafters, and what were those innovations? What were the social/political/economic conditions under which they worked? How did their status as women affect their ability to define their status in the field and exercise autonomy as artists? What creative endeavors required the naming/claiming and consolidation of the status of designer?
• How have design and innovation intersected in women’s stage or performance work, particularly in historical eras or in cultures/theatrical practices in which design, as a subspecialization, did or does not exist? What role have women played in defining design subspecialties or in challenging and changing established conventions? Are there other ways to consider female stagecraft practice beyond the limited constraints on the word and process of creation that upholds a singular, genius model of innovation?
• How did their work help to shape or change the future of theatre or dance as an art form? Why is the recuperation of their legacies important?

• The marginalization of women’s craftmanship and aesthetic processes
• The importance of women as stagecraft educators and mentors
• The spaces of innovation: the workshop, the studio, the rehearsal room, the home, the classroom
• Representations of theatre designers and crafters in literature, visual art, film, and photography
• Innovations in the exhibition of stagecraft
• Stagecraft and cultural identity

• Innovations in artistic practices and design methodologies
• Innovations in labor and production
• Innovations in craft knowledge
• Innovations in sustainability and stagecraft
• Innovations in digital technologies
• Innovations in interdisciplinary practices
• Innovations in theatre technology
• Innovations in scenic vocabularies and strategies
• Innovations in making and materiality
• Innovation in working environments
• Innovations in experimental practices
• Innovations in pedagogies
• Innovations in exhibiting stagecraft

Australasian Drama Studies, vol. 83 (Special Edition)

Resilience? Response, Resourcefulness, Recovery, Resistance

Call for proposals

• Managing precarity and vulnerability: in response to climate crisis, global pandemic, cultural and social and change
• Australasian innovations in approaches to partnership and collaboration to engender more sustainable approaches to performing arts.
• Performance practices and training for resilience, cultural safety and well-being
• Key questions regarding liveness and presence in performance and pedagogy which have arisen (or re-emerged) in relation to the pandemic.
• Alternatives to current renditions and conceptions of resourcefulness and resilience
• Government and policy responses to the Covid pandemic and the post-lockdown environment.
• Alternate economies and the loss of economic certainty for artists and small to medium companies in the performing arts
• Designing robust strategic change approaches to embed arts and artists in communities
• Artistic responses to the Covid pandemic, climate emergency, global economic instability, and war
• The place of care and personal wellbeing within the performing arts
• Intimacy, institutional and corporate responsibility in the performing arts
• University responses to the Covid pandemic
  • The changing nature of the Higher Education landscape 
  • Losses to the sector during Covid
  • Strategic rebuilding for a sustainable future
• Changing aesthetics and production processes in the post-lockdown environment.
• Economic and social labour in the small to medium and independent artist sectors
• Holistic working practices and technologies for a sustainable performing arts sector
• How the industry is contending with with and leading/innovating in policy and procedures embedding First Nations, disability, LGBTQI+ concerns to sustain diverse teams and cultural safety for artists and audiences
• Imagining the future: practice, training, scholarship

Theatre Dance and Performance Training Journal (TDPT)

Special issue: Green Trainings to be published in September 2024 (15.3)

Call for contributions, ideas, proposals and dialogue with the editors

If not now, when? 

• How have training regimes and their articulation contributed to the discourse of eco criticism?
• What historic practices of performance training can we draw on as inspiration for green training today?
• How have historical training approaches differed in their approach to green training, cross culturally?

• Which trainers, institutions, networks, models should we be looking to for help in shaping green trainings? 
• What is the relationship between indigenous and first peoples’ practices and environmentally aware training practice in other cultural contexts today?
• How have recent statements on the climate crisis (IPCC, COP 26/7) impacted upon approaches to performer training? 
• Given the known disparity between richer nations that emit the most carbon and poorer nations that suffer the greatest climate change impacts, how does geography impact on training’s reaction to rising temperatures?
• In work outside of theatres, in site-based practice for instance, how is the training congruent with the performance’s ethics and politics?
• How are performance-based activists trained and what might be learned from such approaches? 

• What value and impact might interdisciplinary connections and research have for green trainings?
• What would a carbon literate curriculum for training include?
• What are the opportunities and threats associated with digital green trainings?
• How will training be shaped by factors of climate change in the future? What will rising sea levels, extreme weather, bioodiversity reduction, new energy sources mean for performance training? 
• What can performer training do to play its part in global adaptation? What small acts can be taken that might excite and motivate others?
• What training initiatives might be taken to lower our carbon footprint?  

• 'Articles’ features contributions in a range of critical and scholarly formats (approx. 5,000-6,500 words) 
• ‘Sources’ provides an outlet for the documentation and analysis of primary materials of performer training. We are particularly keen to receive material that documents the histories and contemporary practices associated with the issue’s theme.
• ‘Training Grounds’ hosts shorter pieces, which are not peer reviewed, including essais (more speculative pieces 750-1250 words); postcards (up to 100 words); visual essays and scores; Speaking Images (short texts responding to a photo, drawing, visual score, etc.); and book or event reviews. We welcome a wide range of different proposals for contributions including edited interviews and previously unpublished archive or source material. We also welcome suggestions for recent books on the theme to be reviewed; or for foundational texts to be re-reviewed. 

• 13 June 2023: proposals to be submitted.
• Early July 2023: Response from editors and, if successful, invitation to submit contribution
• Early July to end October 2023: writing/preparation period
• End October to end December 2023: peer review period
• January 2024: author revisions post peer review
• September 2024: publication as Issue 15.3

• Date: Friday 17 & Saturday 18 February
• Venue: Rex Cramphorn Theatre, University of Sydney
• Cost: $55 (or $30 for 1 day only)
• Enquiries: thomas.deangelis@sydney.edu.au 
• Registration: via the USyd Events Calendar.

• New intercultural practices
• Pedagogic models and values
• New canons, traditions & lineages
• Post-pandemic experimental performance
• Student agency 
• Technique
• The normalisation of technologies and media 
• Telematic music performance and composition 
• Equity, diversity and inclusion
• Emerging practices in industry and professional organisations
• Identity
• Translation
• Creative practice research in Higher Education 
• Consent and safety
• Matrixes of authority 
• Ethics in vocational training
• Citizenry 
• Listening, empathy & attunement

Opportunity-Visiting Professor of Australian Studies (TOKYO)
2023-24 and 2024-25

The Centre for Pacific and American Studies at the University of Tokyo is seeking applications for Visiting Professor of Australian Studies for two terms (2023-24 and 2024-25).

Position title: Visiting Professor of Australian Studies

Open to: Australian citizens and permanent residents

Location: Centre for Pacific and American Studies, University of Tokyo, Komaba Campus

Salary: Starting salary ¥600,000 per month (before tax). See position description for further details.

Duration: Approximately 10 months

Commencement of position: Late September 2023 or late September 2024. Applicants may apply to be considered for a specific term only or for either term. This must be indicated clearly on your application.

Closing date for applications: 1 February 2023

For the recruitment call and more information about the opportunity see the attached PDF or go online to the link provided.

Dear members,

We hope this email finds you well and enjoying a relaxing end to the year.

As telegraphed at our recent Annual General Meeting, the current Editor of Australasian Drama Studies Dr Yoni Prior will conclude her term as Editor at the end of 2023. We will celebrate Yoni's achievements as Editor across the next year, and formally commend her work at the 2023 AGM; in the meantime, we thank Yoni on behalf of the membership for all that she has done to modernise and streamline the journal's activities.

The ADSA Board has opened applications for the role of ADS Editor, with a closing date of 3 February 2023 at 11.,59pm AEDT. This will allow for a substantial handover period across 2023. Details of the application procedure can be found in the attached Position Description. As is noted there, the Board strongly encourages applications from both individual members, and from pairs of applicants who would like to be considered as co-Editors. 

Informal questions about the role can be directed to Yoni (editor.ads@adsa.edu.au). For any other questions about the wider recruitment process, please contact the ADSA Board via Rea (president@adsa.edu.au) and Chris (vice.president@adsa.edu.au).

Best wishes,
Rea, for the ADSA Board.

 

Call for papers: Confronting the Global Climate Crisis: Responsibility, Agency, and Action

Research in Drama Education The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance

Guest Editors: Rachel Turner-King (University of Warwick) and Bobby Smith (University of Warwick)

In 2012, Deirdre Heddon and Sally Mackey’s themed issue of RiDE made an explicit plea for a deeper ‘critical engagement’ with environmentalism, education and applied drama, theatre, and performance. In the decade since, the discourse around climate change has shifted to reflect the immediacy of rising temperatures and ecological catastrophes: a climate crisis and emergency that requires urgent action (IPCC 2022). This necessitates a reengagement with the challenge of exploring, understanding, and representing the crisis in our field and, particularly, how the idea of responsibility underpins or complicates such work and related action. This issue invites researchers, educators, and practitioners to confront the climate crisis with a revived interest in the diverse pedagogical, ethical, aesthetic, and sensory qualities of our work.

For more information, the full call is attached.

300-word proposals for contributions, plus 100-word biographies for each contributor due by 31^st January 2023
To Rachel Turner-King [rachel.turner-king@warwick.ac.uk] and Bobby Smith [bobby.smith@warwick.ac.uk].

Dear colleagues,

The University of Tasmania is currently recruiting for a full-time, ongoing Technical Officer (Performance) to support the activites of the Theatre and Performance program, based in Launceston. Full details and the application link can be found via the UTas Careers site (https://careers.utas.edu.au/en/job/498111/technical-officer-performance) — please note the deadline for applications is rapidly approaching: Monday 28 November, 11.55pm (AEDT). 

Best wishes.
Chris.