After some rest, the TAPRA Working Group Directors / Collectives will resume its activities at TAPRA's 5th Annual Conference at the University of Plymouth from 7 - 9 September 2009. The working group's founding convenors, Maria Delgado, David Bradby, and Brian Singleton, last year passed on the reins to new convenors. Relaunching the group, we now invite existing and in particular new members to (re-)join us at Plymouth.

Our main objective for this year's meetings will be to introduce and discuss current projects and interests of Working Group members, and thereby map out the future path for the Working Group and its activities, also reassessing the original Working Group Statement as printed below. We are inviting proposals for short papers, presentations and interventions, and/or your recent/forthcoming publications in any area of directing and related aspects of theatre practice, both contemporary and historical, whether looking at rehearsal-room processes or the aesthetics of the 'final product'. As the key objective for the conference meetings will be discussion and exchange, we intend to circulate these papers and other material to all participants prior to the conference.
Submissions may want to respond to and engage with one of the following stimuli:
.    Redirecting Directing: Theatre - Dance - Performance
.    Researching Directing: Methodologies, Theories, Discourses
.    Directors - Collectives - Ensembles: Working Practices and Production Contexts
.    The Director's Craft!? - Training/Teaching Directing today
Please submit an abstract of approx. 250 words with a brief biographical note by 1 April 2009. The group is particularly interested to hear about ongoing postgraduate research/projects in the area.
Please submit your proposals to the Working Group-convenors for the 2009 conference:
Una Bauer, Queen Mary and Royal Holloway, University of London, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Peter M Boenisch, University of Kent, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Please do contact us with any queries.

This working group was established to bring together researchers interested in the developing role of creative theatre work that does not fall neatly into either of the two conventionally opposed camps of ‘Devised Theatre’ or ‘Playwrights’ Theatre’. It wishes to focus on the huge creative drive that has emerged over the past thirty or so years from companies which are often headed by powerful directors, but which also maintain a strong commitment to collective work. Obvious examples from the 1970s include the Théâtre du Soleil and the Schaubühne, but since then a large number of groups, in many European countries, have followed a similar path with both local and global inflections.