Theatre and Performance Studies News
TOP STORY: TaPRA 2025 Conference to be hosted at Warwick
We're delighted to announce that the annual Theatre and Performance Research Association (TaPRA) conference will be hosted by Theatre and Performance Studies at Warwick between 27 and 29 August 2025. The conference will mark both the 20th birthday of TaPRA and the 50th anniversary of Theatre and Performance Studies at Warwick. Our conference keynotes, plenary panels, artistic activity, conference dinner and programmed events will speak to the themes of milestones and markers, focussing on celebrations, festivities, spectacle and joy. We'll look forward to welcoming you to Warwick next year!
To keep up to date with the conference plans, please visit our dedicated TaPRA pages here.
Alumnus Tom Fowler has had his work featured in the Royal Court's #LivingNewspaper Edition 2
The Royal Court's #LivingNewspaper Edition 2, includes playwright Tom Fowler, who did his BA in Theatre and Performance Studies at Warwick. Find out more here: https://royalcourttheatre.com/whats-on/livingnewspaperedition2/
Student Olivia Kershaw Sings at Prestigious Musical Theatre Event
Last week Olivia Kershaw was selected to sing as part of the following event:
SING FOR MENTAL HEALTH: Starring Emma Hatton, Aisha Jawando and Rebecca Trehearn
A night of Musical Theatre to raise money for charity, headlined by West End leading ladies, Emma Hatton, Aisha Jawando and Rebecca Trehearn and featuring New UK Musical Theatre writing and emerging talent! This concert will raise funds for Applause for Thought and Industry Minds to offer mental health support in our industry. Please give what you can: https://donorbox.org/sing-for-mental-health-raising-funds-for-industry-minds-and-applause-for-thought
Streaming live on December 16th. Curtain up at 7.45pm!
The show also features music by new UK Musical Theatre writers, Darren James Clark, Tim Sutton, Eamonn O’Dwyer, Amir Shoenfeld, Gus Gowling, Emily Rose Simons, Poppy Burton-Morgan, Caroline Wigmore and Jennifer Green
Plus, emerging talent selected from our competition held by The Sing Space:
selected by the writers… Lizzy Parker, Madeleine MacMahon, Bridgette Amofah, Joanna Clarke, Rebecca Scott and Ros Ford
selected by casting director, Debbie O'Brien…. Bethany Bartholomeusz and Olivia Chloe Kershaw
PhD candidate Sky Herington wins the prestigious TaPRA Postgraduate Essay Prize
In December 2020, it was announced that Sky Herington has won the Theatre and Performance Research Association's prestigious Postgraduate Essay Prize. Sky's essay is called 'Grotesque Bodies & Subversive Healing: The Politics of the Belly in Two Plays by Sony Labou Tansi'.
Addressing Food System Issues through Drama and the Creative Arts': A Webinar
Registration now open for the second
Food Global Research Priorities webinar!
University of Warwick
Coventry, UK
Wednesday 16th December @ 8pm GMT
'Addressing Food System Issues Through Drama and the Creative Arts'
The Food GRP’s second webinar, focusing on the Food Cultures theme, features Mary Swander, Distinguished Emerita Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Iowa State University and award-winning author of fiction and nonfiction. Swander is the Artistic Director of Swander Woman Productions, a theatre company that performs dramas about food and farming, and Executive Director of AgArts, a non-profit designed to imagine and promote healthy food systems through the arts.
In 'Addressing Food System Issues through Drama and the Creative Arts', Swander will highlight her success touring agricultural dramas throughout the United States, raising awareness about issues in the food system. She will discuss her plays Farmscape, Vang, and Map of my Kingdom that confront agricultural topics from livestock confinement to immigration to farmland succession. Currently, she is continuing her creative exploration of agriculture through a podcast called AgArts from Horse and Buggy Land, filled with storytelling about the Amish and interviews with farmers and others making artistic imprints on the rural environment.
The webinar will take place on Wednesday 16 December 2020, 20:00-21:00hrs via MS Teams and will be followed by a Q&A session. To register, please go to: https://warwick.ac.uk/research/priorities/food/webinars/maryswanderreg