Wednesday 3rd to Friday 5th September 2008

We are pleased to announce the dates of this year's TaPRA conference, which takes place at the University of Leeds on Wednesday 3 to Friday 5 September 2008. The conference is jointly hosted by the Workshop Theatre and the School of Performance and Cultural Industries

Conference fees, including one year's membership of TaPRA, will be £135 (waged) and £50 (student/unwaged).

Presentation of research at the TaPRA conference happens through one of the established working groups within the organisation. For information about currently constituted working groups, and their plans and calls for papers for the TaPRA 2008 conference browse the relevant pages on this site.

For 2008, we are also planning an open themed exchange to facilitate discussion across TaPRA working groups. To complement the Working Group sessions, we are planning two Themed Open Exchange sessions. The call for contributions to these sessions appears below.

Many thanks and all Best Wishes,
Helen Iball, Joslin McKinney and Lourdes Orozco

Enquiries may be made via email to: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it


Call for Papers: Themed Open Exchange

The driving forces of TaPRA are its working groups, and the annual conferences their primary forum. At TaPRA 2007 conference in Birmingham it became clear that the specialist focus of these groups enabled a particular and vibrant approach to plenary discussion for the full conference. Indeed, questions posed by each working group for discussion by the others inspired a plenary that addressed theatre, performance and ethics from the particular perspectives the groups represent.

Last year's conference started an interesting discussion that this call for contributions to the two full-conference ‘themed open exchange’ sessions hopes to continue. It also provides an opportunity for delegates to present at TaPRA without and/or within an affinity to a named working group.

Proposals are sought for short (10 minute) presentations/provocations on the theme of theatre, performance, and ethics, to facilitate discussion across the conference. We aim to constitute panels representing a range of specialist interests and to be inclusive of participants at all stages from post-graduate to professor. Drawing on matters arising from the 2007 conference, proposals might consider:

(re)thinking and/or (re)theorising links between ethics and aesthetics – and between ethics and archives and performance re/construction…

How do we decide what is acceptable in the theatre? And what is expected of audiences?

To what degree does political efficacy rely on theatrical affectiveness?

Theatrical truth and/as provisionality, authenticity, witness…


Please send 300 word proposals to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it by 5 May 2008.