The Theatre & Architecture Working Group invites proposals from researchers and practitioners for our meeting during the 2025 IFTR.
C A R N I V A L E S Q U E S P A T I A L I T I E S : siting revelry + resistance
Intersecting with the main conference topic of Carnival Ekstasis | Subversion | Metamorphosis, for our meeting during the 2025 IFTR World Congress, the Theatre & Architecture Working Group will explore what it means to (re)claim and design spaces for public celebrations, as well as engage with performative actions and unplanned performances of revelry and resistance that shape experiences of urban, suburban and rural environments in ways they were not designed or intended for.
The topic "Performing Carnival" ranges from planned festivals to the carnival of everyday life, encouraging us to consider the spatial politics of performing carnival on the local and global stage. Current world events serve as a catalyst for rethinking and challenging our perceptions of the carnival of the everyday between architecture, performance, land, and cultures which they embody. How do we understand cities and urban environments differently through the carnivalesque? This meeting is an opportunity to consider what it is to create and critique theatre architecture, performance spaces, cultural venues and the public realm, both on and offline ? operating between the imaginary and reality.
We invite flash talks and provocations that engage with practices and approaches to the revelry and resistance of carnival and the carnivalesque.
Abstracts may address (but are not limited to):
Theatre architecture, performance space and public assemblies
post/de/colonialism
Ground, soil, habitat, landscape and territory
Boundaries, margins and edges
Performance and terrestrial politics
Transitions, movement and migration
Precarity, vulnerability and performance space
Critical approaches to staging the city
Performative urbanisms
Urban scenographies
Place, displacement and emplacement
Nomadic theatre, and de- and re-territorialization
Margins and marginality
Indigenous and place-based ecologies and epistemologies
Performance space and the state
Performance space, performance design and the city
Theatres and performance spaces as loci of struggle and resistance
Margins and marginality
Cultural landscapes
Haunting
Occupation
Contesting domination
Settler atmospheres
Site-specificity and site-responsiveness in theatre and/or architecture
Theatre & architecture in the anthropocene/industriocene
Performance as vibrant assemblage of body and architecture
Performance, sustainability and social justice
Place-making and community engagement
Theatre as an ecologically transformative gesture
Architecture and temporality: resilience and transience
Porous and/or ephemeral performance spaces
Spatial performativity and spatial agency
Performance space, location and landscape
Deadline for proposals
We invite proposals and provocations that engage with the theme, and may take the forms of PechaKucha presentations (20 slides x 20 seconds) or flash talks (8-10 mins). This aligns with rethinking collaboration formats during WG meetings, which could include workshops or performative engagements, depending on the number of proposals we receive. Please be mindful that resources and time for workshops or performative engagements will be restricted.
Abstracts can be submitted via the IFTR Cambridge Core portal. Please note that you must renew your membership or become a member in order to submit: https://www.cambridge.org/core/membership/iftr
Deadline for the Submission of Abstracts: 15 January 2025.
TAWG Flash talks / PechaKucha presentations are to be pre-circulated by 9 May 2025.
