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.
Fat Performance (Studies) Today
Jussara Belchior, Magdalena Hutter, Gillie Kleiman
Wednesday 24th May 4pm-5.30pm on MS Teams
The Fat Performance Reader is to be an edited collection of original artistic and scholarly material discussing fat performance, which we define - for the moment - as performance whose meaning-making is both predicated on fatness and can speak into a conversation about fatness. In this talk, the three editors of this collection will discuss the origins of the project, its aspirations and limitations, and the key themes that have emerged through dialogue with contributors, as well as our individual perspectives on fat performance (studies). We will continue to unpick our understandings of fat performance and its relationship to the disciplines of performance studies and fat studies, unfolding our collaboration in public.
Biographies
Jussara Belchior (Brazil)
Jussara Belchior is a fat ballerina. She also works as a choreographer, a collaborator in other artists’ projects and a researcher of practices and writings in contemporary dance. Her projects deal with fat people, fatness and non-normative bodies. She has a PhD degree in Live Arts. She is currently developing the CAIBA project (Catálogo Imaterial da Baleia - Whale Immaterial Catalogue), alongside that she is a part of the MANADA and the Escrita Performativa collectives. She is interested in poetics and politics of movement and positioning yourself through dance.
Magdalena Hutter (Germany/Canada)
Magdalena is a documentary filmmaker, cinematographer, and photographer. Her projects frequently deal with themes of belonging, ranging from documentary film to installations and interactive documentaries. In addition to her own projects, she also works as a DoP and consulting producer on other documentary films. She is a PhD candidate in the Interdisciplinary Humanities at Concordia University in Montreal/Canada, doing research-creation about fatness in dance and developing frameworks for Fat ScreenDance.
Gillie Kleiman (United Kingdom)
Gillie Kleiman works with and in dance and choreography, creating performances, texts, events and pedagogical encounters. Gillie’s work has a persistent interest in both the figure and the activity of the non-professional, and many of her projects have involved participation of non-professional collaborators or of the audience; this was the topic of her PhD project (completed in 2019). In 2020, Gillie initiated a new cycle of thinking and working about fat and fatness. Alongside her artistic practice, she is Head of Higher Education at Dance City, an adviser to Jerwood Arts, a Trustee of People Dancing, and external examiner at the Danish National School of Performing Arts. She is a member of the trade union UVW-DCW and is an accredited trade union representative. Gillie lives and works in Newcastle upon Tyne.
Mourning Theatres: Pandemic Grief and Queer Performance
Fintan Walsh
Wednesday 3rd May 12pm-1.30pm on MS Teams
Grappling with extraordinary loss and its political denial, theatre and performance during the pandemic innovated forms and approaches to support the work of mourning. In particular, queer practices drew on their deep reservoirs of grief to make room for it in the bewildered present. This paper explores how some of this work intervened the social and cultural climate of the coronavirus pandemic, and how the pandemic enabled queer theatre and performance to reanimate and repurpose its own archives of loss.
Scene Painters who became Artists, Artists who became Scene Designers: Artists and the Theatre in Nineteenth Century Britain
On behalf of our Friends Association, please find below details of their first fundraising event of 2022.
We are delighted that Professor Jim Davis, Professor of Theatre and Performance at the University of Warwick, has kindly agreed to give a talk (via Zoom)
'Scene Painters who became Artists, Artists who became Scene Designers: Artists and the Theatre in Nineteenth Century Britain'
Tuesday 26th April 2022
6.00pm BST. Finish approx 7.15pm including time for questions & discussion
Open to EVERYONE
Register for FREE Ticket and make DONATIONS via Eventbrite here:
The 21 Day Voice Over Challenge is a chance to create a positive working habit, learn something new and record your voice every day for 21 days.
No matter if you’re an experienced voice over artist, just plugging in your mic or anywhere in between this will give you daily challenges that will help you grow your talent, creativity and focus.
If you have a studio, perfect but not essential as the challenge can be recorded on any phone.
It’s jam packed with different areas of the voice over world including character work, accents, gaming, audio books and much much more!
Here’s the website where you can find out more and the social media handles are @voiceover_tribe